Dear FIFA: There’s no Scientific Test to stop Age Fraud

You can be forgiven for missing that the qualifying matches to get a huge youth soccer event-the Africa Cup of fut 17 coins Nations-are underway right now, what together with the Olympics taking center stage all week. But then you definitely might miss the most recent “doping” scandal playing out in soccer headlines: Nearly half of Nigeria’s U-17 (beneath age 17) team has been sidelined depending on lab scans.

However the dismissal isn’t more than a classic malfeasance like performance-enhancing chemicals or hormonal supplements. It truly is about age fraud. Clinical testing suggested that these players had been really older than 17.

As a result, 24 young male athletes from Nigeria have been deemed ineligible to participate, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) told Scientific American. (Initially, 26 players were excluded but two players have been reinstated immediately after appeal.) The choice to bar these Nigerian players in the tournament was according to a procedure that FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, place in spot in 2009. It urged youth players to submit to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of their wrists in an try to ascertain their age eligibility. (CAF, which can be under the auspices of FIFA(fifa coins), needs all players to submit for the scans as part of the regulations for the U-17 Africa Cup of Nations.)

Admirably, the protocol is developed to stop older, stronger players from getting into youth tournaments in settings where birth certificates or other methods of verifying age may perhaps be absent. In line with FIFA, wrist MRIs along with the bone development they show can indicate if a player is older than 17. However a deeper dive into the study behind this choice reveals that its foundation is shaky at very best.